“Only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything—about everything I own in the world.”

Women are More Valuable than Men and That’s OK

March 15, 2012

Women are valued more highly than men and one rarely sees even any pretence to the contrary. Men are supposed to let women and children escape to safety while they lay down their lives. War-zone reporting focusses on the suffering of women while passing over the fact that all the men have been killed. When a woman is raped, it’s a calamity, but when a man is raped, it’s a joke. A woman losing her children is a nightmare, but a man losing his children is a routine matter of ‘justice’ in the divorce courts.

There is little point lamenting this. It has a biological basis: since one man can in principle take up the reproductive labours of a thousand others, the loss or destruction of one man doesn’t much matter. Whereas each woman matters because women have a much more limited reproductive potential.

This is by no means an altogether bad thing. It is only the human condition. If men did not have to fight for the recognition that is a woman’s birthright, there would be no civilization, because all of civilization is built on men’s drive for accomplishment, which is driven by men’s desire to win women. But even the lowliest man—who may not otherwise have much to contribute—can gain honour from sacrificing himself for women and children, and if that were ever to change it would be a loss.

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How much of this concern for women is cultural? I remember reading the thoughts of Japanese traveller to Europe in the mid 19th century:

“Kawaji … had ample opportunity to observe the European tradition of chivalry in practice. It seemed to him that ‘the ladies on this ship possess great authority and assume an air of importance equivalent to that of an imperial princess in our land’. He was curious to discover ‘the British custom of paying inordinate respect to ladies; they take their seats before their husbands and sit in the best places at mealtimes as well’. Later in the voyage he concluded that, ‘of all the countries in the West, Britain has the most pronounced custom of paying respect to ladies. From what I have seen on this ship, it seems that, when talking to a lady, you take off your hat and treat her most politely. This is the reverse of the ranking in our country, and I find it most astonishing’.
…
“Kawaji felt moved to ask for some clarification on the subject of chivalry, but was disappointed to learn that ‘this is an old custom, and there is no particular explanation for it’. He was, nevertheless, impressed by the fact that ‘the custom of holding ladies in such respect enables them to travel thousands of miles overseas on their own without coming to any harm’.

Of course you are right about women being more valuable – that’s why in warfare men are killed and women taken captive.

But in that case, and in general, women are seen as valuable like cattle are valuable, not, as has become common in the west, as having a need for, perhaps elevated, moral consideration.

Remember what a non issue rape has generally been in terms being concerned about harm towards the women in any sense but basically damaging her market worth, or as an insult to her family/clan/etc.

Value does indeed often mean something like “economic value.” That is often true with men as well—for example, if boys are better labour for the farm, than they may be seen as more valuable than girls. Then they’re basically like cattle as well.

There are definitely cultural factors as well. It does seem that economic value has become enshrined as almost moral superiority in the west somehow. I don’t know anything about how that happened, but I do think that it’s gotten totally out of hand now. Women are often openly contemptuous of men now.

Reverence for women seems to be aligned with a relative scarcity of women in some cases though, and is probably a good thing for promoting a pro-marriage attitude in men.

It seems to me that the peculiar horror we have of rape *still* reflects the sense of insult and damage to value. Rape strikes directly at the heart of a woman’s peculiar value. We’re just not supposed to think about it that way anymore.

I think people generally think of rape as something that pretty much only happens to women. The awareness of male rape is pretty new, and most people still don’t think of it as nearly as widespread, which it isn’t.

So any thinking on rape is going to focus almost entirely on women. The moral reasoning could be some sublimation of economic thinking. But, even if it wasn’t, our reaction would still assume it to mainly be an issue for women, so it’s hard to know how connected the two responses are. After all, I don’t think many people actually feel like a women who has been raped is somehow less satisfactory as someone’s marriage partner, while they might think that about other sexual behaviour.

Attitudes towards male rape are changing now that people realize it happens. But it is complicated by the fact that it highly emasculating, etc.

Rape, though, is a crime against virtue; a slut or a whore has none, and so like the Romans, who didn’t consider raping such a crime, we really shouldn’t either, IMO. Thus, rape should be a non-issue, with the non-virginal young unmarried women of our day. But we care more and more, instead, because of feminism.

I beg to differ. It is no fun when someone puts something hard and stiff in your openings. It would still quality as assault. Men have no “virtue”, yet it is wrong to rape them by sodomizing them forcibly.

But feminists obsess about ‘date rape’, which is a non-existent crime.

Either rape is rape, or it is a woman deciding the next day she regrets having had sex, and wishes to punish the man do excape moral responsibility for her actions. That is what ‘date rape’ is all about.

It wouldn’t surprise me if, in the US, male rape was actually more common than female rape. It is a significant, and very likely massively under-reported problem in prisons, which have seen a huge increase in population due to amongst other things the war on drugs.

Contrast this with female rape, where feminist statistics notwithstanding, the actual frequencies are very low, unless one broadens the term to include meaningless ideas such as post-hoc revocation of consent.

The main reason for the ongoing hysteria around rape is that its simply not as much of a problem (in terms of numbers of women affected) as feminists make out, but at the same time its a primary source for the myth of female victimhood. In other words, rape in our times is becoming more and more a political crime which is used to perpetuate the feminist agenda regardless of the actual harms inflicted on women.

Finally, historically speaking, rape was a crime against men (inflicted on their women). The damage wrought by rape was understood to be an attack on womens’ chastity, which would mean that either she became less marriageable (affecting her father) or doubts would be cast on the paternity of her offspring (affecting her husband). Many rape laws recognised the importance of chastity when considering rape, meaning that juries were far less likely to entertain the notion that (e.g.) a prostitute had been raped, even if similar circumstances would be held as sufficient for a chaste housewife.

Modern western women, as a group, no longer hold chastity as a virtue. However, rape is still perceived and punished as it used to be when chastity was required of good women. This is a double standard, but one that is very much taboo.

Though from the data they mention it’s clear it’s still more common for women to be raped in those situations.

On your comments on chastity and prostitutes. I recall reading about a 13th century law in England that made it a crime to rape a prostitute. The reasoning was that she might have decided at any moment she no longer wanted to be a prostitute. It’s an interesting example for two reasons: first, it clearly relates the significance of rape to the attitude/behaviour of the woman; but second, however they rationalized it, it’s clearly an (early?) sign of the sorts of attitudes towards rape and women that emerged in western Europe.

“This [regarding women as the valuable sex and men as the disposable one] is by no means altogether a bad thing”. Really? I think it’s appalling. It’s the root of all human rights abuse and atrocities. You should read or listen to what Warren Farrell has to say about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtGwBsKgKs

…but it’s not OK…
the truth is men are just as reproductively limited as women. if we are to seriously think about the progress of civilisation here then we cannot accept the false and shallow belief that men are inferior to women in terms of human value.

OK think of it this way; one man has the capability to impregnate multiple (even up to thousands) of women at a time. its very possible to increase population this way. BUT. this increases likelihood of inbreeding. yes, half-brothers and sisters, unaware of their relation, producing children. what would be the result? what would the generation of children, who came from the children of one man who impregnated multiple women, look like? most if not all individuals will have a mental/developmental problem and if the inbreeding persists survival will eventually become impossible.

it would be the same outcome if one woman produced children from multiple men. even though the numbers would be lower the odds of humanity’s survival would be pretty much the same. therefore, a balanced number of males/females is key.

to summarise: it is not about HOW MANY children are produced…it’s about the PURITY of their genetics.

it is a huge cause for concern that people are still conditioned to believe that men should be inclined to place the value of the lives of women above their own, as it is for women to expect that men do this. men HAVE just as much VALUE as women. that’s the truth. the sooner people accept this view, the faster we will improve as a civilisation. think equality. it is real.